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this episode picks up from our last episode episode 100 it's called ten thousand feet in the air
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if you haven't listened to that one yet you may want to go back and listen to them in order
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after Martin McNally hijacked a plane lost the money parachuting to the ground and was surrounded by FBI agents near
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his house a few days later he was given two life sentences and sent to Leavenworth federal penitentiary in
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Kansas when I went to prison the doors opened Pandora's boxes open and I will do anything and I will do everything to
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get out of prison because I'm not never I'm not going to accept it and I never did accept it and the fact is I should
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be free it was there in 1975 that he met another hijacker his name was Garrett Trapnell
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okay Garrett Trav now I like that dude he was so solid Smart Genius rapnell was a a maniac
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he is kind of like a combination of Leonardo DiCaprio's character and catch him if you can with DB Cooper and like a
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little bit of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest he was both Petty um but also kind of a megalomaniac and
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he was sort of a bomb that he would sort of drop into people's lives and use them
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how he wished um for his own gains and uh he found a sort of a counterpart in McNally this is
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Danny wisentowski a reporter for the Riverfront Times in St Louis Garrett Trapnell was said to have had
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six different wives at the same time and at least 25 aliases in 1972 just months before Martin
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McNally hijacked his plane Garrett Trapnell hijacked a plane from Los Angeles to New York
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he was one of the 130 hijackings that happened between 1968 and 1972. Garrett Trapnell pretended to have a
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broken arm and he hit a gun in the fake cast he demanded 306 800 and a phone call
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with President Nixon after the plane landed in New York an FBI Marksman posing as a member of the
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flight crew shot Garrett trapped now and took him into custody this wasn't Garrett trapnell's first
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arrest he'd been arrested at least 20 times before for robbing banks forging checks and stealing more than a hundred
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thousand dollars worth of jewelry from a store in the Bahamas and for all those crimes he'd spent less
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than two years in jail he developed this tactic of studying Psychiatry and he was
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able to use the insanity defense as a strategy to get himself out of prison situations and into Mental Hospitals
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where he could either be released after a year which happened a number of times or Escape outright in an interview
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Garrett Trapp now bragged that he knew more about Psychiatry than your average resident psychiatrist
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he described the insanity plea as a license to Kill he said he could go out on the street in
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New York shoot 10 people and be free in six months he added that of course he'd never do a
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thing like that in 1973 he used the insanity plea during his trial for the hijacking it was a
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hung jury during the second trial Garrett was convicted given a life sentence and sent
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to Leavenworth that's where he met Martin McNally I knew his case suddenly he knew my case
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and uh at one particular point there I said listen if I ever have an opportunity I'll uh snatch a
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plane and demand your release and he said Mac if if that happens I'll do the same thing for you
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plane hijackers started coming up with a plan to get out of prison using the very
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thing that got them in there in the first place as Garrett Trapnell once said escaping
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is as American as apple pie I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] Garrett trap now was sent to prison in
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1973 and by 1976 a journalist named Elliot azanov had published a book about him it was called the fox is crazy too
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the subtitle was the true story of Garrett Trapnell Adventure Skyjacker bank robber con man lover there's this
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line at the beginning where asanov is describing him this moment where trapnel is
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in the midst of this hijacking and he writes it was as if he thrived on the brink of a towering precipice a man for
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whom danger was the stimulant that sparked his genius his mind was as sharp as his speech his eyes took in
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everything figuratively and literally he kept his back to the wall this was kind
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of the picture that he was painted as this outlaw this this person who discard who both used people but was above it he
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was like a main character of a thriller novel but who lived in real life um and the book is really
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you know gives you a sense of of kind of the spell he could put you under trapnel's address at Leavenworth he
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received a lot of fan mail much of it from women oh he's certainly got a gift to gab and uh that gift to gab
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e had all the women uh flying to him like uh in his fly trap that uh he could get him
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these fan letters were forwarded on to him when he was relocated to the First Federal super max prison the U.S
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penitentiary in Marion Illinois Martin was sent there too they happen to end up in the same cell
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block just two cells apart from each other that's where they were when Garrett got
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a letter from a 43 year old woman named Barbara Oswald she had read the fox is crazy too it was required reading for a
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criminal justice course she was taking do you remember Garrett telling you about her
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of course what did he say of course he showed me letters that she had written him and uh
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that Gary was spending hours and hours and hours writing to her Barbara Oswald was a former Army flight controller she
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was a single parent living in a suburb of St Louis after a motorcycle accident a couple of
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years before she left the Army and was studying criminal justice specifically inmate rehabilitation
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she and Garrett wrote for months she said she loved him she started visiting four times a week
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she would sometimes bring her teenage daughter Robin on visits Martin says that Garrett promised Barbara that they
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were going to run off together to Australia he even showed her photos of the house
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where they were gonna live he comes back from a visit one time knocked on my door
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uh he said can I come in I said yes come on in I said what's up he said how would you like to leave this
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this place in a helicopter and I said well uh I paused well uh uh I don't know we're gonna have to
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discuss this we'll have to discuss the details before I make a decision on something like that but yeah let's look
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into this Martin and Garrett looped in a third man a bank robber named Kenny Johnson he would help them rob a bank
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once they were out within a few months they had a plan in place it all hinged a on Barbara Oswald
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she would hijack a helicopter he convinced her he told her he says you could do this
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[Music] I think there was a sense of almost disbelief that this could actually happen because they virtually had to do
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nothing all they had to do was make sure they were in the right place of the yard
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getting ready to run and that's really it they're you know in the moment imagining what it'll be like to fly out
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of this prison shooting down at the guards as they go [Music] everything goes wrong
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Barbara Oswald followed their instructions exactly she put a diagram of the prison yard in her pocket she hid
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guns in her briefcase she made up a story about being a real estate agent interested in seeing aerial views of
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some property and on May 24 1978 she went into St Louis and chartered a helicopter
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and for some reason she gets into a helicopter being flown by the worst possible person she could have chosen
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um combat pilot named Alan barclich and Barbara Oswald tells him that she wants to look at some property you know in the
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area from above some flooded areas um the flight starts and not long after Barbara Yanks off his headset puts a gun
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to his Temple and says you're flying to Marion and we're going to get Garrett out
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we saw the chopper all three of us saw the chopper at about 5 000 feet and it was coming over the trees and and
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there was a high winding like a muffler and go and then when it gets out of the trees
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into uh open ground it would go the difference on that so when I heard it go I yelled out I says now now
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go as we're waiting there I I'm jumping up and down uh standing on a yellow jacket
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and I'm waiting for the pilot to see me and then I hear the rotor of the chopper
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it's uh and it's it's it's a level it's not moving and I I hear it uh start to uh
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run down in other words shut down and I looked over the Trap and I said oh trap we got a problem here
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[Music] as the helicopter hovered over the prison the pilot Alan barclage who was
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now being held at gunpoint by Barbara Oswald noticed all the armed guards in the prison towers and his survival
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Instinct starts to click in he figures there's no way that they're going to let me take this helicopter out of this
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prison with those guys inside I'm gonna die and so he does something that you know is is kind of unbelievable
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even to describe he tells Barbara Oswald you should open the doors while we're still up here
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um they're very heavy and they're difficult to open and if you're concerned about time do it now
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Barbara Oswald begins to struggle with these heavy metal doors and she shifts the gun
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um out of the hand she was using to point at him she's now holding the gun in her right hand and her fingers off
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the trigger and then Alan barclage turns around he takes his hands off the controls and he grabs the gun in her
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hand he told investigators later that her last words were it doesn't matter I've
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got another one she reached under the seat and that's when Alan barclich shot her
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four times he said he just kept pulling the trigger until he saw her slump over one bullet blew a hole through the
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helicopter window Alan barclage managed to regain control of the helicopter and safely landed 70
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feet away from the prison Administration Building and down to the ground McNally is sort
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of hopping up and down waving his arms and they see the helicopter land in the wrong spot and instead of Barbara you
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know with the door open waving them in with you know handguns and weapons they see a guy in a Blue flight suit
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run out of the helicopter and run into an Administration Building he is terrified of what he's just done
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he's also terrified of being shot by the guards and eventually he's confronted by
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prison guards who with their you know weapons drawn and Alan barklidge is beside himself he you know according to
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the guards you know and later in these later investigations the guards are saying They Came Upon Alan barcledge who
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was just repeating over and over again I've been hijacked I've killed someone I've been hijacked I've killed someone
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when trapnel came back from being talked to uh he said uh Barbara's been shot and
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killed by the pilot and I said damn oh God [Music] Martin Garrett and Kenny were each
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charged with attempted escape and kidnapping and waited for their trials Garrett insisted on defending himself
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and because of that he was given certain privileges he was actually able to inspect the
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sight of the crash and he's also given leeway to interview his own Witnesses and one of those Witnesses is Robin
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Oswald the 16 year old daughter of Barbara after her mother's death Robin dropped out of high school she
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wrote letters to Garrett Trapp now a friend of Robbins told the newspaper that Garrett was like a father to her
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Robin said Garrett told her about all the things she could have a horse all the clothes she could ever want the Jeep
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she'd always talked about but he could only do that if she helped him Escape here's Garrett in a TV interview
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recorded years later I felt a responsibility I was the one who caused her mother's death
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uh at the same time I want to get out of prison he convinces Robin to finish the work
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that her mother started on December 21st 1978 seventeen-year-old Robin Oswald boarded a flight in
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Louisville headed for Kansas City prepared to follow the instructions Garrett had given her
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five minutes before the plane landed she handed the flight attendant a node it said that she had three sticks of
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dynamite strapped to her waist she demanded to be taken to the small airport near the Marion prison in
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Illinois and for Garrett trap now to be released and brought there there are some problems first she was
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supposed to have made the demand in the first five minutes of the flight not the
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last second the dynamite wasn't real she hijacks a plane herself at the age of 17.
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with no weapons and with nothing more than what will turn out to be road flares and a Detonator that is you know
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fashioned from some pieces of plastic that are connected to nothing and she just keeps
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repeating I want Garrett [Music] about what they're going [Music] uh he was a she turned 17 he was a 17
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year old girl who went out and took a plane to break someone out of prison I don't think I don't think Hearts get
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any bigger than that [Music] after the plane landed in Illinois no one was let off everyone waited for
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Garrett Trapnell to be brought to the airport Robin requested sandwiches coffee and
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milk one passenger later told newspapers that she kept talking about her mother and
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how she died in a helicopter you know later the passengers on that plane would you know tell news reporters
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that you know she was in charge but she wasn't me and another man said you know her grammar was good never used a curse
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word everything was pleasing thank you and you know he recounted that at some point Robin even sort of quipped to a
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stewardess aren't I the nicest hijacker [Music] um at the same time in the FBI are looking
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at this they're trying to figure out if she has a real bomb the FBI knew that Robin's mother had
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been able to get weapons and they assumed Robin could as well some passengers pretended they were
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going to the bathroom and snuck off the plane but there are still people on board and
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so they were faced with a very tense situation eventually though the mechanical issues on the plane meant
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that a lot of the circular the air circulation went off it got very hot and uncomfortable and Robin steadily allowed
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more and more people to leave the flight when she was distracted basically the rest of the plane emptied out and she
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eventually surrendered to the FBI after 10 hours and she was taken into custody and what happened to her
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it's hard to say a lot of the reports around the time said that she was put in juvenile detention
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that she was released not long after that she was not you know considered an adult she didn't do a lengthy amount of
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time and she really disappears a lot of what we know about her comes from an interview she gave to an FBI
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crime show her face was hidden she said quote I think he was very wrong for involving other people in his dirty
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work at 16 years old you think you know all and you don't I was just a little kid
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Garrett trap now was never charged for any involvement in Robin Oswald's case both trapped now and Martin McNally were
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found guilty in Barbara Oswald's case and returned to Marion prison to serve life sentences on top of their existing
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life sentences he McNally describes both himself and trepnel as monsters who destroyed an entire family Robin's life
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Barber's life and that she had just wanted something very similar I think that he
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did to make something of herself to to do something adventurous and Larger than Life to be the main character of your
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own masterful Thriller you know the to be that Adventurer the lover the you know to be you know someone who would be
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on the cover of a pulp paperback gear trap now didn't try to escape again he died in prison in 1993.
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Martin McNally was released on parole in 2010 he lives in St Louis now Danny wasintowski has been interviewing him
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for almost three years Airline hijackings almost destroyed you know what was sort of a civil institution the
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idea of getting in a plane right off on the tarmac you know not even eating even buying a ticket on a
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plane after you've taken off the idea that a plane was just you know another conveyance maybe even a luxury
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you would get dressed up for it was something incredibly American in the sense of a frontier that had not yet
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been explored and in a matter of years you had men like Garrett and McNally destroy this idea
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criminals produced by Lauren Spore Nadia Wilson and me audio mix by Johnny Vince
00:21:27
Evans Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see them at this
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criminal.com where on Facebook and Twitter at criminal show criminal is recorded in the studios of
00:21:41
North Carolina public radio wunc we're a proud member of radiotopia from PRX a collection of the best shows around
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shows like the truth a beautifully produced anthology of short scripted stories their latest is a four-part
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a world of crime cover-ups and whether or not Redemption is ever possible subscribe to the truth wherever you get
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your podcasts or go to thetruthpodcast.com I'm Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music]
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